


sugar we're going down swinging

by aryasbadbenergy



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Gore, TW: Blood, Tw: blood mentions, Zombie AU, gendrya gift exchange, its like really angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:54:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21586987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryasbadbenergy/pseuds/aryasbadbenergy
Summary: Gendry carries his trusty hammer for smashing in zombie skulls, while riding around on his bike, which Arya has dubbed “The Murder Cycle”. She, on the other hand, prefers a bow and likes to keep a kill count as they travel from town to town.(for the gendrya gift exchange!)
Relationships: Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 22
Kudos: 85
Collections: Gendrya Gift Exchange 2019





	sugar we're going down swinging

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thiccjoffrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thiccjoffrey/gifts).



> (merrymhysa / renata-klein on tumblr)
> 
> I really hope you like this!! I went back and forth a lot about what I wanted to write for this, but I'm happy with the finished product and I hope you are too! happy gendrya gift exchange!

**We're going down, down in an earlier round**

**And Sugar, we're going down swinging**

**I'll be your number one with a bullet**

**A loaded God complex, cock it and pull it**

**Sugar, We're Goin' Down ~ Fall Out Boy**

Arya’s last arrow struck the zombie pinning Gendry down in the throat. The zombie gurgled out a groan and collapsed next to him. Gendry clutched at his own throat and tried to slow down his breathing. “Saved your life. For the one hundredth and forty-third time,” she teases. 

“Thanks.”

Arya shrugs. “I need more arrows,” she responds before she presses her foot to the dead zombie’s chest and pulls her arrow back out. She wipes the blood off on its grimy pant leg and slides it back into her quiver before moving to the arrow that had struck the bush behind its head. 

**143.**

Arrow through the eye. 

**144.**

Gendry’s insists that he killed four of the five, but he hit the fucker after her arrow had already made it into his intestines, so she had two kills. 

**146.**

Dagger to the throat. She needs more arrows. 

**147.**

Arrow through the decaying tit into the heart. The fletchings of one of her last two arrows tore off. 

**148.**

Gendry stops the Murder Cycle in front of the Walmart and Arya swings her leg over the side. She nocks her last arrow from her quiver and starts walking towards the doors. The automatic door had come off of its tracks, so she ducks under the crooked opening. Gendry pulls his sledgehammer out of the seat compartment and follows behind her. Arya bangs a broken cart into the walls a few times to draw out any zombies in the solace of Walmart. Nothing makes a sound except for the cart. She steps further into the store. 

The directional signs hanging from the ceiling were surprisingly still intact across many of the Walmarts that Arya and Gendry had come across, but the electricity wasn’t always stellar. She shines her flashlight at the signs to illuminate them and eventually makes it to the hunting gear section. 

“Hey, how about we start eating this shit,” she teases and throws a pack of dehydrated spaghetti at Gendry. He catches it and laughs. 

“Yeah, I’m sure it will taste just like your mom’s. How about dehydrated pizza? Just add water.”

“No, by far the best meal here is the dehydrated chicken enchiladas,” she grins. 

A groan comes from behind one of the aisles to their left. “Motherfucker,” she grumbles and reaches for the sealed pack of arrows from the bottom of one of the shelves. She props up her flashlight to shine across the aisle which offers a little more light on top of the flickering LEDs above them.

Another groan to their right. And the sound of unbalanced steps from somewhere else in the store and more groans and limb dragging and Arya tugs on the plastic unsuccessfully. 

Gendry raises his sledgehammer and takes out the zombie running towards him. Blood and brain splatters onto the ground. Another zombie gets his face knocked in before two more run into the aisle at once. Arya finally cuts through the plastic with her other arrow before the third zombie running in can get to her or Gendry. The zombie Gendry aimed for was smart enough to duck and grabs for his leg. 

“Fucking hell, some help would be nice!” 

“I’m trying!” Arya shouts back before cutting the one closest to her in the throat with the sharp edge of her bow. She nocks her arrow and kills the zombie limping behind Gendry and draws a new one out of the package, aiming for the zombie now latched onto Gendry’s arm. He tries to grab his hammer with his other arm so he can kill it before its snapping jaws make it too close to his wrist. “Don’t move,” Arya commands.

She releases the arrow, but the zombie yanks on Gendry’s arm. The arrow grazes Gendry’s arm, but still hits the zombie enough that it shocks it, but doesn’t kill it. It lets go of Gendry’s arms and he swings his hammer into its skull. 

Gendry sets his sledgehammer down to inspect his arm. “You shot me.”

“You moved.”

Gendry huffs and shakes his head at her. “You say that like I moved on purpose.”

“Sorry,” Arya says and grimaces at the cut. She picks up her flashlight and motions for Gendry to follow her in her hunt for more antiseptic. 

**150.**

“Looks like we’ve found somewhere to sleep,” Gendry comments, stopping in front of the smatter of motel rooms. 

He pulls flat head screwdriver out of the storage compartment along with his sledgehammer and steps towards the main building of the complex. Arya follows close behind him to cover him while he picks the lock and raids the office for a room key. He finds one and holds it up. Arya grins and he tosses it to her so she can find the room that it goes to. When it opens the second door she tries she looks back at Gendry who is putting the screwdriver back in the compartment and pulling out his chain. 

He chains his bike to the lamppost next to the door, which makes Arya laugh to herself because they hadn’t seen another living person for at least a week. He locks the chain with the key he kept around his neck and follows Arya into the room.

She tests the faucets with running water, but doesn’t let herself get disappointed when the only water is little drizzle that’s turned brown with rust. 

She washes her hands with water from one of the water bottles instead. Their water supply was limited—like every fucking thing else—but that was because they couldn’t exactly transport 40 bottles of Great Value on Gendry’s Murder Cycle. They would usually just load up their packs with a few bottles and hope they pass another Walmart before they ran out. Arya wasn’t about to die from a fucking bacterial infection during the apocalypse though, so they still washed their hands whenever they could and tried to at least keep their faces clean. Arya would say she would kill for a shower, but now that she’s killed 150 times and still hasn’t had that shower, the proclamation has lost its meaning. But she might bite a zombie for a shower. She digs the first aid kit out of Gendry’s pack while he pulls the gauze off of the cut. 

Arya pours a small amount of the antiseptic into the gash on Gendry’s forearm. Arya pulls the nylon thread out of the first aid kit and cuts off a strand to stitch the cut with. Her mother had tried to teach her how to sew clothes back up so they looked as good as new, but Arya was never very good at sewing prettily. It would get the job done, though. Gendry bites down on his bottom lip while Arya pulls the needle through his arm and sews it up. She tries to do it quickly, but she doesn’t want to mess it up. She finishes the suture and cuts the thread. Gendry hands her a new gauze bad to cover the stitches with. She tapes it in place and throws away the rest of the thread before she holds a flame from her lighter to the needle to sterilize it. 

They pack up the first aid kit and clean up. They had been able to snag some new pants and shirts from Walmart, but they could only take a change or two at a time. 

Arya rubs soap on her hands and Gendry pours some of the bottled water into her cupped hands. She lathers her face up next and Gendry pours water for her again. When her face doesn’t feel like it’s caked with decay she swaps places with Gendry and pours water for him. She pulls out her toothbrush and the squeezed-to-hell tube of toothpaste that she had been lugging around for a while and brushes her teeth. She peels off the layers that she had been wearing for the past several days and changes into the new clothes. Gendry changes, too, and they eat some of their jerky supply and dehydrated apple slices. 

“Remember when you shot me?” Gendry teases. Arya playfully rolls her eyes at him and bends down to give him a soft kiss. 

“I said I was sorry.” She starts to stand back up, but Gendry grabs onto her hand. He sets his other hand on her hip and Arya leans forward again. Arya cups his face and he hooks his finger through her empty belt loop to tug her closer. 

* * *

Arya traces Gendry’s bull tattoo with her nail. It’s always been her favorite. The bull head covers his heart and takes up most of his chest. “Do you think that if we looked hard enough we could find an operating tattoo shop?” Arya teases. 

Gendry lets out a half huff, half chuckle. “Only you could be in the middle of a goddamn apocalypse and want another tattoo,” he grins and Arya can’t help but grin back. It had been so long since he had truly grinned with his bright eyes and wide smile, and she didn’t know how much she missed seeing a smile on his face. “What do you want a tattoo of?”

Arya’s smile falls a little. She looks down at the three little flowers on her forearm. One for each of the Starks that she’d lost. That had been before though. 

For all she knew, she might be the only one left. Her phone had died three days in, not like there was any manpower to keep the service going. She couldn’t exactly shoot Jon a text like “Hey, for sure at least 3⁄4 of this country has been wiped out, but how are things up in Greenland? Has whatever this is spread to your part of the world, yet?” And Bran had been up in Greywater Watch during the outbreak. Rickon was away at ROTC in God-knows-where this time—she wishes everyday that she would have asked before he left—but she didn’t know if he was safe with the military or not. And Arya didn’t even know where to start looking for Sansa. 

“You want another flower?” Gendry asks. He had been with her when got the first flower, a Virginia Bluebell, for her father. And the sunflower and dandelion for her mother and Robb. “You don’t know that they’re dead, Arya. They’re still out there either waiting for you or looking for you,” he promises, so sure of the thought. 

Arya nods a little. She misses them. Arya misses listening to music and eating food that didn’t come from a can or a vacuum-sealed bag and getting to shower whenever she wants to and being able to ride somewhere in a car even if she used to find Catelyn’s hatred for Gendry’s motorcycle alluring, but above all, she misses Jon and Bran and Rickon and Sansa. And there’s still a chance she can find them. 

If no one is at Winterfell manor, which is where they are headed, Arya is going to keep looking. She won’t rest until she finds them. 

* * *

They come across the bright red, bleeding handprint the next morning a few buildings away from the motel. Zombie blood was a dark brown, even if it was fresh. There might be a saveable human in the building. Arya presses her index finger to her lips and Gendry rolls his eyes, but nods. She slips into the building and steps carefully to avoid creaky floorboards. She goes into the first room on the left and Gendry takes the next room to the right. She shines her flashlight through the room quickly and moves onto the next. A clatter and a scream comes from the back room, and Arya’s grip tightens on her bow. She hated splitting up with Gendry. They worked better as a team, even if she had shot him. 

_Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Quick as a snake. Calm as still water. Fear cuts deeper than swords._

She treads towards the sound and grimaces when she hears the horrible sound of a zombie feeding. She walks faster and reaches the still-swaying two-way door. The white paint had chipped over the years, but the bloody handprints were fresh here as well. She catches a glimpse of the room when the door swings in for a moment and counts at least two zombies. She draws her arrow and aims for one of the kneeling zombies. The door swings in again and Arya fires, knocking the zombie down onto its side with an arrow plunged into its back. The other zombie looks up from its meal with a grunt and Arya nocks another arrow. The zombie groans lowly and Arya strikes it in the head. She lets out a small sigh and steps into the small room. She nocks another arrow just in case and inspects the poor girl that had become the zombies’ lunch. 

Arya’s stomach almost overturns. She takes a slow breath and debates in her thoughts for a second. 

It was Bella. She was still alive, her chest barely moving, but she had been bitten, and her heart would stop soon enough. And Arya was going to have to give her mercy. 

Gendry hardly knew Bella, but it would upset him to have to see her after she had had bites taken out of her. But there was no way that Arya was going to try to hide his sister from him. He had a right to know. “Arya,” Bella croaks, and stares past Arya. 

Before Arya has the chance to call for Gendry, a zombie that must have been crouching behind the counter grabs Arya from behind. She flails and tries to get out of its grasp but it pins her arms to her sides. 

“Gendry!” She shouts and kicks behind her. She digs her nails into its fragile flesh and tries to pry its hand off of her, but it doesn’t flinch. She swings her bow behind her and hits it in the legs, but the zombies are hard to injure enough that they let go of their prey, and harder to kill unless their heart stops. Its fucking mouth gets too close to her neck and Arya can only squirm away and kick harder. Gendry runs into the room and helps pry Arya from its grasp before he smashes its head. Arya takes a slow breath and leans against the wall. There was only about an hour between the human being bitten and turning into a zombie. 

“That was close,” Gendry mumbles. “You okay?”

Arya nods. “Gendry,” she starts softly, “it’s Bella.” Gendry clenches his jaw. 

“What?”

She points to the girl. They knew the consequences of not giving the human mercy—more zombies, more victims, more humans dying. Arya doesn’t want to kill Bella, but she has to do it.

Gendry kneels next to Bella and grabs her hand. She smiles a little at him and her eyes are already starting to glaze over. “Gendry.”

“Hey, Bella,” he murmurs. “I had hoped our reunion might have been a little nicer than this,” he admits with a small chuckle. Bella smiles again. Blood comes from her mouth, but Gendry gulps and pretends that he doesn’t notice. “It’s going to be okay,” he promises. “It’s going to be okay.” Bella nods a little and Gendry lays her hand over her stomach and stands. He grabs Arya’s arm and leans down into her ear. “She’s my sister,” his voice breaks. “You have to do it,” he says and steps out of the room. 

“You understand what I have to do?” Arya asks. Tears come from Bella’s eyes, but she nods. “I’m sorry.”

Arya draws her arrow. 

**153.**


End file.
